Cuba Day 2, Part 3 - Free Rum Shots, Sharing Space with Castro and Finding God

The Havana Club Museum of Rum is located in Vieja Havana in a converted 18^th century townhouse only a stone’s through from the harbour.  Having paid our entrance fee we pose for photographs by the Havana Club sign which takes a bit of time. It’s a well known image and everyone wants a shot of themselves in front of it (me included) and there is lots of swopping of cameras and checking of results before we move on into the museums small shady patio.  Here there are broad stone columns surrounded by ferns, yuccas and palms and a small bar offers its own special cocktail made with freshly wrung sugar cane.  Havana Club is now the only international rum label produced on the island.  Back in the day Mr Bacardi had a bit of a thing going in Cuba too but after the revolution he split and headed for Costa Rica.  It seems there is still bad blood between the Bacardi family and the Cuban government who accuse the family of funding organisations which help maintain the current US blockade.   I know my own position on the blockade – I believe it is wholly wrong and creates severe shortages of basic commodities and causes significant suffering for the Cuban people.  But, I also see it from the perspective of the Americans who had nearly all of its private assets nationalised when the new Cuban revolutionary government took power over1959/1960.  The US-Cuba relationship seems a complex thing, fuelled on the surface by diametrically opposed ideology but underneath perhaps as much by individual’s desire for power and control.  President George W.  Bush’s decision to impose even greater restrictions on trading with Cuba in 2004 may have brought him new voters but it caused even more humanitarian problems for Cubans.  But, Fidel Castro dug in his own position and seems to refuse to recognise the march of progress and the basic human rights of freedom of speech and movement for his people.  Whatever the rights and wrongs of the two positions , there is no doubt that it is the Cuban man or woman on the street who bear the brunt of the problem.

But, the rum museum is worth the fiver we paid, the free (though very small) samples at the end make me realise that 15 year old Havana Club is every bit as good as Cognac and I also got to experience probably the best model railway I have ever seen.  This fantastic little setup, which must have been made by a master craftsman, is situated halfway around the tour.  It is a masterpiece of a model railway designed to capture the essence of the great sugar refineries and rum distilleries whose immense chimneys rose as landmarks all over Cuba during the pinnacle of its years as a regional economic powerhouse.  It takes in the sugar cane fields, the steam railway which on Cuba was the first to be used in Latin America for the transport of sugar cane, it shows the huge factories with their blazing furnaces and the towns and buildings that rose out of the wealth that was generated.  The guide turns on the railway as we gather around its 15 foot square span and everything comes to life in a moment, the train begins its route around the fields, in fabulously scaled down factories and private properties, tiny lights blaze and models of tiny people work in the fields chopping cane.  I am mesmerised and stay watching it for a few more minutes after the group has moved on.  God, Hornby, you have got serious competition.

Our lunchtime venue we are told is somewhere very special.  It is not smart particularly, nor is it expensive, and it isn’t exclusive either.  In fact it is a bar/restaurant like many other hundreds of bars in Havana.  This one, though, happens to be one of Hemingway’s documented haunts and is called La Bodequita de Medio.  We are crammed onto a tiny table in a corner which isn’t really large enough for seven but we squeeze onto it anyway.  In what is one of Havana’s most celebrated venues you tend not to complain about the table you’ve been given, you are just grateful you’ve got one.   A visit has become de rigueur for tourists and visitors from home and abroad and having in the past included Fidel Castro himself (though I’m not sure that will have been very recently ), Harry Belafonte and Nat King Cole, all of whom have left their autographs on La Boedquita’s walls.  Now everybody does it and we do too, but before you start thinking this is a moment where carefully considered and profound musings get left for posterity it turns out that with the exception of the comments made by very big names the walls are painted over every few months.  So, my small written application of sentiment which included several expletives expressing my view of recent events is probably already painted over.  Maybe that not a bad thing.   A painting over of the wall is perhaps as good a metaphorical assuaging of emotion as anything.  In the tiny bar at the front a four piece band continue to perform with verve and panache as we exit into the afternoon sunshine.  A few CUCs lighter but with a sense of having shared a moment in space if not in time with a couple of history’s more memorable figures.   I feel slightly dozy and full of food and drink and meander, a little more slowly and carefully than usual across the uneven cobbles of the lane and up to the Plaza de la Catedral.

Most of Havana’s tourist attractions of which the cathedral is one are filled with a cohort of entrepreneurial locals trying to earn their bit of hard currency.  There are the flower girls, who are found in nearly every plaza and who are attired in flamboyant and colourful dresses topped with a brightly colour turban. Often they have small baskets of fake flowers, sometimes they have fake Cuban cigars of an improbable size, but whatever they have as props but they are impossible to miss. This isn’t because they are necessarily attractive or young but because they seem to have an almost unbelievable and instinctive understanding of trigonometry. They can pick up your movement coming into the square, assess your trajectory and incept you no matter your speed or direction.  They often hunt in packs.  And particularly for the men in your party, they can be very insistent that you have your photograph taken with them.  All for a price of course. The Plaza de la Catedral is a delight of baroque architecture and eighteenth century flamboyance but the cathedral itself due to weather and environmental damage looks a little like the stone is dissolving.  The remains of Columbus were interred here from 1795 to 1898 when they were moved to Seville.  Inside the cathedral it is quiet and the air hangs hot and heavy.  Two large old-fashioned copper fans with leads that snake across the floor move the air just enough to give a moment of coolness as you walk across its path.  I like visiting religious buildings, I like the smell and the sense of permanence and the remainder that we are all where we are according to God’s will.  Though to be honest, He’s not exactly in my good books at the moment.  I break away from the group and guide and wander around alone.  The main seating which runs down the centre of the church is cordoned off which disappoints me because even though I’m not entirely at one with the Big Cheese I would still to have a chat with Him as I’m in the neighbourhood.   I notice at the front of the church and to the side of the ornate and heavily gilded altar there is an open door which leads to a small private chapel.  Inside a few rows of wooden pews face an almost life-size replica of Christ on the cross.  It looks so real I feel that if I reach out and touch it the flesh will yield. I sit and gaze at Him and the manner in which it the cross is hung and the effect of the painted image behind it makes it feel like He is almost floating in front of me.   I sit there for a long time in quiet and sad contemplation until someone from the group comes to find me.

 Outside an old, thin woman in a faded blue cotton wrap and a ragged turban wound around her head is leaning against one of the stone columns close to my group and catches my eye.  She gestures for me to come closer but I shake my head, she then makes a demonstration as if she is writing with an imaginary pen and I shake my head again.  Next she pretends she is rubbing something into the skin of her hand and lower arm and I shake my head once more.  She puts her hands together like she is praying. The hands are dark and gnarled and the nails are long and dirty.  Her eyes plead with me but I look away.  I feel I want to help her, to contribute something which might ease her life just a little bit, just for a moment, but we have been given express direction that we must not give anyone money or even little gifts such as biros or hand-cream because begging in Cuba is becoming more common and with tourism on the rise and the currency it supplies so valuable to the country the government doesn’t want it’s people to become a nuisance to its visitors.  We have been told even if we give over something like a pen or hand-cream then it is just taken around the corner and sold for cash and the cash used to buy drink.  My rationale self understands this stance but my emotional irrational self feels guilt for all I have and for all that they do not.  I go and sit back with the group and listen to our guide who is filling us in on the kinds of things you don’t read about in the guidebooks.  She is extremely knowledgeable and interesting and we learn much about everyday Cuban society and the realities of living in the country, good and bad. We learn about the health system (all free), about education, about the local Santaria religion. It adds useful substance and texture to the ‘lite’ version of a city you usually see as a temporary visitor.   

Back at the hotel we do not have long to spare but I have time for a quick dip in the pool.  The single row of sun-beds which surround the pool are mostly full now but the water is empty.  I spot the two young men from yesterday, one of whom is having an argument with a girl, his girlfriend I assume. She turns away from him and pouts and then holds out her hand to admire the paintwork on her fingernails.  It makes me smile that she has not taken the little exchange to heart.  Thirty minutes later I am back in reception, changed and ready to meet the others for our Mojito-making class and Salsa lesson.

See the Cuba photos on the Gallery.